


The Road That Leads To Home

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 03:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12099498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: He surveys the land before them as the Wakandan plane hovers over the landscape, and Natasha tries to imagine it through his eyes.“A farm?”“A safehouse.” Somewhere to recover, with no lingering ghosts, with nothing to trigger his responses, even now the programming has been taken out.The expression on his face is bleak. “And is it safe for them?”





	The Road That Leads To Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Port](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Port/gifts).



Nat never lets herself think too hard about the children she’ll never have, the home she doesn’t get to have.

“You know my children are yours, too,” Laura always says when Nat comes to visit. “Just because you don’t have a DNA part in them doesn’t mean you can’t be a parent to them, too.”

“I’m not a village, Laura.”

“Just as well,” is the easy response as Laura strokes a hand down Natasha’s nape and turns her face for a kiss. “I don’t fancy being the village bicycle.”

–

Clint’s tactility with her gives rise to whispers, particularly among the other field agents with whom he’s stand-offish. The other STRIKE teams are particularly vicious. Sometimes Nat can almost hear him grinding his teeth as he tries not to respond to the ugly slurs and taunts of the (inevitably) male agents.

“They don’t matter,” she reminds him as they get off the quinjet, trailing behind Rumlow’s STRIKE team, because they don’t feel like strutting along with the pack. “They’re just assholes.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t think about punching their lights out.”

And now she’ll be contemplating punching their lights out, too. “Well, unfortunately, they’re also assholes who are good at what they do. So more thinking, less doing.”

–

Clint goes home after being ‘heartwashed’ by Loki’s staff, and Laura texts her with updates on Clint’s state of mind until Natasha can get back to the farm.

When she does, she rides herd on both the kids and Clint, giving Laura a break.

It’s a relief when the biggest problem is persuading Cooper he can’t dress in aluminium foil and jump off the shed roof.

“You’ve got to learn all the mathematics before you can fly like Iron Man,” Natasha says as she shows Cooper how to fall off the roof into a deliberately-positioned hayrick. (Yes, Clint is going to kill her, but it’s the only way she can think of to get the kid down without broken bones or screaming Cooper.)

“Can’t I just take a serum, like Captain America?”

“Believe it or not,” Natasha tells him, “Math is safer.”

–

The necklace is a stupid gift. Sentimental, when she tries hard not to be. In spite of what Laura says, what Clint assures her, this is not her home, not her family. She’s a part of their lives, but it’s not her life.

Still, she can’t forbear from wearing it, even when she shouldn’t – on missions where such a gift might mark her out, make her traceable.

Others notice it, of course. Fury gives her the hairy eyeball. Maria lifts both brows. Jasper frowns and adjusts his glasses. Rumlow’s lip curls. Only Steve asks outright.

“So...I thought...you and Barton...?”

“We just friends,” she says with as much firmness as she can, and sees his gaze dip to the hollow of her throat and his eyes narrow slightly as though trying to make it all add up.

–

After fighting the Winter Soldier, the nightmares start up again.

At least it’s Maria who finds her curled up in a ball on the lounge in Stark Tower, even if she does call in Bruce to assist. Natasha isn’t happy about that, but Bruce is discreet and Maria does her typically impressive job of running interference without looking like she’s running interference, and nobody else finds out.

Still, after that, there’s a flicker of something in his eyes – a little more warm than medical professionalism, a little less intense than the Other Guy.

–

Sometimes, Natasha wishes that Laura was a little less understanding. It’s not pleasant to feel like she’s always the broken one, the one who scrapes up the fragments of her life over and over while Laura holds everything together.

“I’ve felt like I’ve been doing nothing but breeding,” Laura says when they’re rubbing oil into her very swollen belly. “You and Clint are saving the world – or trying to, and I’m just barefoot and pregnant.” She wiggles her toes.

Natasha’s fingers curve over the slight bulge that Laura assures her is Nate’s head. _This one’s yours._

“Not ‘just’,” she says. “Never ‘just’.”

–

After Ultron, after Wanda, her memories feel a little cracked, a little raw. She remembers a warm body and a cold arm, a dark-haired man with death and life and pain and grief in his gaze for those few moments when he became someone else – when the leash wore thin enough that he might reach for someone else who yearned for comfort to drive away the dark.

But the Winter Soldier doesn’t remember her – doesn’t remember anyone.

And he’s deadly, wanted, responsible – and missing.

–

T’Challa receives her in Wakanda, and Natasha isn’t entirely sure whether she’ll be a guest or a prisoner when she goes. But Laura knows where she is and maybe that counts for something after the mess that the Avengers have left the world in.

Maybe.

Maria’s expression is less than delighted upon seeing Natasha, a slight pinch at the corners of her mouth. Natasha ignores it; because maybe she could have contacted Maria when the Accords went down, but if she didn’t, nobody else did either, so it’s not just on Natasha.

“How is he?”

–

There are few places to take someone who’s an internationally wanted criminal, and considering she’s just taken Bucky Barnes from one of them, there aren’t many options left.

He surveys the land before them as the Wakandan plane hovers over the landscape, and Natasha tries to imagine it through his eyes.

“A farm?”

“A safehouse.” Somewhere to recover, with no lingering ghosts, with nothing to trigger his responses, even now the programming has been taken out.

The expression on his face is bleak. “And is it safe for them?”

–

Cooper is delighted in typical boy fashion. Lila is intrigued by the arm and utterly, ridiculously without fear. Nate is in the stage where everything is climbable, including people.

And oh, how Natasha wishes she had a camera to capture the look of sheer, unadulterated terror on James’ face when Nate grabs his leg, holds up his arms, and gives his most appealing look.

Laura drops the basket of clean laundry and laughs so hard she nearly wets herself.

Clint, on the other hand, cocks a hip against the dining room table and says briskly, “Well, pick him up. He’s decided he likes you.”

–

Nate is not the only one who’s apparently decided he likes James.

“Okay,” says Laura when Natasha comes in from the most recent in a string of calls reassuring Steve that his buddy is fine. Considering Steve hasn’t yet turned up on their doorstep, either someone’s worked out how to make him stay put, or Natasha’s got him convinced. “I guess we should talk.”

Natasha is startled. “Talk? About what?”

It becomes pretty clear around the time Laura nudges her husband and Natasha realises she’s never seen Clint blush like that before and most especially not when looking at another man.

–

She doesn’t ask what James does for Clint, nor what Clint does for James. She doesn’t have to; there’s an ease in their shoulders now as they work, and a lightness in Clint which she hasn’t seen since before Loki.

Maybe it’s just that they both know what it is to be unmade, and how hard the road back is.

“You’re okay with this?” Clint asks, more than once in the first month. He stops when she elbows him in the solar plexus and walks off, leaving him gasping.

But Natasha holds off from James.

Sex is easy, but this is no more ‘just sex’ than what she has with Laura. It’s intimacy, and with a man, which is always more complicated than with a woman, and also difficult after Bruce.

–

First frost has been pending for a while, but a low pressure system slides down from the mountains and dumps a landscape’s worth of snow in the first week of November.

James and Laura and the kids have the snow fort already set up and dug out, and Cooper is vibrating with the joy of a wheelbarrow full of snowballs that he just can’t _wait_ to throw...

“They’ve got it all set up,” Clint observes from beside her on the porch. “We should probably play.”

The adults are fair game, the kids are off-limits. And everyone keeps an eye on Nate, who thinks snow was made for him to eat and screams with every mouthful – in delight or in horror, Natasha isn’t entirely sure, but Laura doesn’t seem to mind, so she’s not going to make a point of it.

–

Natasha and Clint have a slight advantage, but Laura and James have numbers on their side and they use it mercilessly.

And, as Natasha knows, it’s a dangerous thing to go up against the Winter Soldier. Even in play. _Especially_ in play.

He catches her low around the hips, hauling her up with his arms wrapped firmly around her thighs so she can’t kick him, before he takes a few steps and dumps her in a soft snowpile. There’s a moment when, adrenalised and with her blood pumping, Natasha reacts as though she’s been attacked, starting to eel to her feet, her hands coming up to ward him off.

James yanks her in. She glimpses a flash of blue eyes, still burdened but no longer hollow, then there’s a soft mouth against hers.

Her hands cradle his face, and the warmth in her belly has nothing to do with the warmth of his body cradled against hers in promise of what comes later.

It’s the warmth of home found.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The danger of saying 'anything' to me is that I will probably do _anything_. In this case, it's pretty much a sedoretu. I hope you enjoy it!


End file.
